"It's all about love, taking the love that we receive from nature, in the form of wine, and giving it back to the earth, in the form of helping our needy brothers and sisters in Africa," said Luca Sanjust, owner of the Petrolo winery in Tuscany.

Petrolo, a high-quality boutique winery that produces only about 70,000 bottles a year, is just one of the Italian producers sending a life line to Africa through their vines.

The project that links Tuscany's idyllic rolling hills with some of the world's most blighted areas was started seven years ago by Rome's Sant' Egidio Community, which has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize.

As part of the program, more than 120 of Italy's finest vineyards put a sticker on some of best bottles reading "Wine for Life - this bottle helps fight AIDS in Africa."

Some two million bottles have borne the stickers in the past eight years.

Fifty euro cents of the price goes to Sant' Egidio to finance their program called DREAM -- an acronym for Drug Resource Enhancement Against AIDS and Malnutrition -- to administer antiretroviral treatment.